with critical judgment) for these purposes they may be
trusted. But to require you, at your stage of reading, to have
even the minor names by heart is a perversity of folly. For later
studies it seems to me a more pardonable mistake, but yet a
mistake, to hope that by the employ of separate specialists you
can get even in 15 or 20 volumes a perspective, a proportionate
description, of what English Literature really is. But worst of
all is that Examiner, who--aware that you must please him, to get
a good degree, and being just as straight and industrious as
anyone else--assumes that in two years you have become expert in
knowledge that beats a lifetime, and, brought up against the
practical impossibility of this assumption, questions you--not on
a little selected first-hand knowledge--but on massed information
which at the best can be but derivative and second-hand.

Now hear Bacon.

Studies serve for Delight--

(Mark it,--he puts delight first)

Studies serve for Delight, for Ornament, and for Ability.
Their Chiefe use for Delight, is in Privatenesse and
Retiring[1]; for Ornament, is in Discourse; and for Ability,
is in the Judgement and Disposition of Businesse.... To spend
too much Time in Studies is Sloth; to use them too much for
Ornament is Affectation; to make judgement wholly by their
Rules is the Humour of a Scholler. They perfect Nature, and
are perfected by Experience: for Naturall Abilities are like
Naturall Plants, they need Proyning by Study. And Studies
themselves doe give forth Directions too much at Large,
unless they be bounded in by experience.

Again, he says:

Some Bookes are to be Tasted, Others to be Swallowed,
and Some Few to be Chewed and Digested: that is, some
Bookes are to be read onely in Parts; Others to be read but
not Curiously; and some Few are to be read wholly, and with
Diligence and Attention. Some Bookes also may be read by
Deputy, and Extracts made of them by Others. But that
would be onely in the lesse important Arguments, and the
Meaner Sort of Bookes: else distilled Bookes are like
Common distilled Waters, Flashy Things.

So you see, Gentlemen, while pleading before you that Reading is
an Art--that its best purpose is not to accumulate Knowledge but
to produce, to educate, such-and-such a man--that 'tis a folly to
bite off more than you can assimilate--and that with it, as with
every other art, the difficulty and the discipline